M17x R3 Switching from 6970 to Nvidia how/worth it?

Alright, so for starters, I'm sure that I am not the only person who is getting a little bit fed up with the bull you have to put up with when you have an ATI GPU in a laptop you paid quite a bit of money on.

I mean, this is literally the first time ever (and I've been messing around with computers since I was a kid) where a BSOD during install is just "usual". Not to mention all other problems an ATI user puts up with like drivers being totally crap and held together with faith alone when you try to hotrod them together or outright being buggy if you use Leshcat's combo. And let's not mention Dell's 4 year old drivers that are passed as optimal even though they will derp out moment you throw them a newer game.

Hence, like any sane person (i think) would do, I've decided to look into changing over to Nvidia but asking Dell about it doesn't quite help since I'm in the UK and they apparently can't quite bother with anything over here. Anyone here tried changing to Nvidia from Ati, does it work and if it does, how much does it cost and is it worth the effort?

Cheers.

PS. I won't bother quoting dell's reps about upgrading gpus since they told me to look into a their store that actually has nothing remotely related to hardware, but from other posts that i've seen this machine is "officially" compatible with some mediocre/oldish nvidia cards, not quite sure what's actually compatible though since they assume you'd upgrade from ATI to ATI and so on.

 

First off welcome to NBR!!

I used to have the BSOD problem all the time till I upgraded to windows 8, and then it magically went away. Now I just install drivers on top of the original 6990m driver. I even have fully working hybrid graphics. just a note, Nvidia released a crap driver a month or so ago that caused a huge set of problems for a lot of people, so they aren't exactly immune to such issues either.

 

Thanks for the welcome.

Yeah, I heard that nvidia messed up but it can't be much worse than ATI at the moment.

 

Welcome to the forum..:hi2: You didn't post your spec's so I can't recommend the exact cards. But you can switch to Nivida from ATI..just get the card and heat sink for your model. You can find a ton of cards on ebay and install then down load the drivers and away you go. Plus you could sell the 6970 and recover most of the cost. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks

Edit: Used AlienAutopsy to get the specs. Seems to be easiest way to figure out the random dell stuff.
Motherboard: Intel PCH HM67
CPU: 2630QM
GPU: Intel HD Graphics (usual stuff) / AMD Radeon HD6900M Series


What other specs do you need?

 

Unfortunately NV have destroyed their cred in the last 6 months so the playing field is level. Just remember if you go NV then 314.22 is the last known working driver

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/721878-nvidia-320-18-driver-warning.html#post9240231

 

Hey MickyD, you're really going to town on NVidia drivers at the moment, I noticed your posts on Geforce.com! ;-) I do admit the latest drivers seem ropey for 580M & 675M owners (same chip of course), resulting in burned out cards! I think for some people the latest drivers are fine though. They're fine for me for instance.

 

Yup, there will be thousands of people not seeing any issues, but of course posts like, 'works great for me' along with their card are rare in the NV forums.

My crusade is keeping me sane and not focussing on my own problems; way to go NV, you are helping a stroke victim recover

Edit: And I'm trying to keep NV forum users away from here, last thing I need is a bunch of trolls and fanboys flaming my posts (as they do over there!)

 

Haha, yes, it was getting pretty funny over there! And I can understand you wanted to keep distracted, and it adds to the community, so keep on keeping on! Hope your recovery keeps progressing.

 

I've found the 326.19 beta drivers to work well, with the exception of Borderlands 2. (Random crashes) 314.22 has major issues with Tomb Raider, but if you don't play that then it's a good driver.

And Gi133 - coming from experience, BOTH nVidia and AMD can be complete crap on occasion. I had 3 GPUs die in my r3... Though that was probably helped along by the motherboard and fan issues I was having.

 

Hmm, so if they are both iffy, would it just be better to just keep laptop as it is right now and just make a desktop? Cause that's the vibe I'm getting right now.

 

Dice roll I'm afraid IMO, or the magic 8 ball. Evidence it thin on the ground and conflicting!

Yeah, I would NEVER say AMD are better, it's just I have got used to perfect drivers from NV, and aimed at newbies, so even the simple upgrade option, keeping all your custom settings have worked for over a year now.

NV=newbie (or used to)
AMD=Enthusiast

Is my take right now

 

I'd agree completely. Personally, I use a lot of gpgpu applications, and so I think I'll be trading my 765m for a Volcanic Islands chip once they debut. (one major advantage of AMD is compute performance, and of course a newer process node is going to help enormously too)

 

I'll be going nvidia in my next machine. I miss their ease of drivers and plus the option for 3d is always nice too.

 

I run both, NV in this 17 had 6990's in a m18x and run powercolor 7990 in my Area 51. I really don't have an issue with either company. I find a solid driver and stay with it until another one is released.

 

Define what a solid driver is for an ATI card, cause I've not seen one yet. I suppose the one Dell has is stable enough but it's so old it won't run anything at all. That's the main issue though, Dell isn't releasing drivers for ATI cards and nobody is even really bothering -not even ATI is doing it for laptops with switchable gpus- other than Leshcat or if you get some other modified ones (Leshcat apparently being the best but even they tend to be unstable as hell sometimes).

 

The 770M is very cheap (for an MXM card), would be an upgrade and is very tweakable and efficient.